


The End of the Line

by romanticalgirl



Category: Generation Kill
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-14
Updated: 2013-04-14
Packaged: 2017-12-08 11:56:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/761045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/romanticalgirl/pseuds/romanticalgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I am announcing that the American combat mission in Iraq has ended.   Operation Iraqi Freedom is over, and the Iraqi people now have lead  responsibility for the security of their country.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The End of the Line

**Author's Note:**

> Much much love to [](http://alethialia.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://alethialia.livejournal.com/)**alethialia** for her awesome comments, and to the rest of the girls for their encouragement.
> 
> Originally posted 9-6-10

It ends in a lot of ways like it began.

A line of vehicles on the sand and no one sure of what the job is or where they’re going. They plow into Kuwait and sit there, engines rumbling like lost dragons, spitting up dirt and dust. Orders come down, and they go single file, like the British in their red uniforms in the Revolutionary War, sitting tin-plated ducks in a line, fifty-meter dispersion as they go.

Brad watches from the sidelines, his truck silent. In the distance a couple of reporters stand around with a cadre of Generals, waiting for the last truck to leave, waiting for them to announce that the combat mission in Iraq has ended. Brad scoffs and spits a stream of tobacco into the dirt. “Operation Iraqi Freedom my ass.”

“You don’t think those people are free, Gunny?”

Brad doesn’t bother to answer.

**

They have a layover in Germany. Brad watches the guys get loaded up in the airport, ignoring them as he sips his single malt. He’s learned to appreciate the finer things in life now, tired of watching his friends and associates walk away from things with fewer limbs, fewer senses, fewer days on their calendars. Nobody gets out of war unscathed. The lucky ones just have their scars on the outside.

“Brad? Brad?”

He doesn’t look up. Ever since that goddamned book and miniseries came out, everyone thinks they know who he is, think he’s public property. Everyone thinks they know him – understand his pain or some other bullshit psychobabble crap that fucktards like Rolling Stone spread around like so much manure.

“Brad.”

Something about the voice registers and he looks up at last. His vision tunnels slightly and he has to shake his head before he can actually react, can stand up and stick out his hand. His reflexes are failing him, or, more likely, he’s beyond being surprised. “Captain.”

“I haven’t been called that in years.” Nate smiles, and Brad’s taken aback by how honest and open it is. There’s no reservation in it now, nothing that holds it in check. Nate’s hand is out as well, grasping Brad’s, his other hand curved under Brad’s elbow. “It’s good to see you.”

“You too. Strange. But good.” He steps back and sits down again. He nods at the empty chair at his table, inviting Nate to sit next to him. He thinks, not for the first time, that military men talk in silences, speaking volumes without a word. Or maybe it’s just that the table is quiet, the lounge is quiet. Everyone else is off drinking or sleeping or waiting for flights home, talking to sweethearts or wives, girlfriends or children. Brad doesn’t have anyone he needs to talk to right now, no one waiting for a call. He comes home when he’s home and not a minute before. “What brings you here?” He has to stop himself from calling Nate ‘sir’.

“I was in Iraq. On the border. I heard it through the grapevine that you were there too.”

“You were there, sir?” He covers the slip with a sip of his whiskey, but he can tell by the glint in Nate’s eye that it didn’t go unnoticed.

“Yes. I was granted a special envoy.”

“Pays to play in the big leagues, I guess.”

“CNAS has a vested interest in what happens next. I thought it might offer some insight to see it all end.”

“Nothing’s ended.” Brad takes another drink and stares out at the dark through the windows, lit up with colored and blinking lights, mimicking the night’s sky. “Oh, sure. We say it’s over, because we had a deadline. But everyone knows it’s not over. So what if they’re designated as advisory or training troops? Every US troop is a combat troop.”

“That’s like saying every hammer is a weapon. It’s all in how you use it.” Nate gets up and goes to the bar, getting a glass for himself and a bottle. Brad recognizes the label and he nearly chokes on the last sip of his drink. Nate sets the bottle down with a smile. “You don’t mind?”

“That you want to blow a couple hundred bucks on a bottle of whiskey? Not at all.”

“Putting it that way makes it sound like it would be wasted.” Nate opens the bottle and Brad can almost hear the sound of money as he pours a few fingers into each of their glasses. “I definitely don’t call this wasting it.”

They drink in companionable silence for a while, giving the whiskey its due. Brad’s relatively certain he’s going to regret ever tasting this, because he’s going to _know_ everything else is second rate now, but he’s also relatively certain he’s never going to have another shot at something like this. “Did it give you any insight? Being here?”

“The faces are different.” He laughs and tilts his glass toward Brad. “In some cases. The rank and file has changed. The Humvees were headed in a different direction. But the situation isn’t any different. Nothing changed.”

Brad nods and takes another sip from his glass. “Did you expect it to?”

“I wouldn’t do what I do if I didn’t have hope. Neither would you.”

“You always ascribed higher morality to what we did, more so than any of the rest of us, you know. Most of us are in it for the college tuition or to stay out of jail or for something to pay the bills in this suck-ass economy.”

“You signed up because of a knight fighting a dragon.”

“You shouldn’t believe everything Person told you.” Brad sighs and scrubs his hand through his short blond hair. “So what do you guys do now? Analyze data and tell the government what they did wrong? Poke holes in their precious lies and figure out how to unfuck the situation when it explodes again?”

“Something like that, yeah.” Nate smiles, his breath coming out in something that’s not quite a laugh. “Though we actually sort of hope to prevent the whole exploding part.”

“Trying to put me out of a job. I see how it is.”

“I wish I could put you out of a job.” Nate smiles again, but this time it’s rueful. “I doubt very much that’s going to happen.”

“Might serves right went out with King Arthur.” Brad sets his glass down, rolling the edges of its base in a slow circle on the clouded wood of the table. “What are you doing here, Nate?”

“The world’s changing, Brad. The means and the method we’ve stood by since the beginning of time don’t work anymore. We’ve tried. We’ve thrown good men and bad at things, trying to fight wars with old rules and old logic. We’ve adapted and modified yet we’re still just dropping bombs and hoping they hit the bad guys. We can’t keep killing innocents and destroying countries. We have to fight smarter.”

“There are no longer combat troops in Iraq,” Brad laces the words with sarcasm. “And didn’t you hear? We won the war _years_ ago. Hell, you and I were there, weren’t we?”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.” Brad straightens in his chair and looks levelly at Nate. This is common ground – no, better. This is even ground. “We involve ourselves with police actions and call them wars because Vietnam went over like a lead balloon. We have placed ourselves in the public eye as the defender of all freedom, ours or other peoples, whether they want it or not. You and your guys, you give us facts and figures. You’ve been on the ground and you’ve seen. You’ve seen what we’re dealing with, Nate, and no matter how many times you stand up before Congress, no matter how many papers you put in the hands of Generals and Presidents, _nothing_ is going to change. You can’t even get people in America to call soccer football, let alone convince them to use meters and liters, unless it’s for fucking soda. You are not going to convince them that the right way to win a war is not to fight it or to fight it using counter-insurgency techniques without the shock and awe. The general public wouldn’t accept it. Hell, what _I_ normally do in Recon would make most of the people watching CNN and Fox news shit their pants, knowing that good old American boys were sneaking behind enemy lines like a fucking _terrorist_.”

“So it’s useless? Give it up as a lost cause?” Nate smiles ruefully, and it’s the same smile Brad got to know far too well for forty days in Iraq. He much prefers the other smile Nate gave him before. “Take my ball and go home?”

“You want to make war real, Nate, and the people back home want war to be palatable. They want simple. They want sound bites and news clips and bad guys in turbans. They want it to be things they can forget about when they change they channel. Fuck, they want their _reality_ to be a bunch of ridiculous people living on an island together eating fucking bugs to win a million dollars.”

“So change it. Help change it.”

“Me and what Army?”

“Well, that’s a ridiculous question. The Army can’t do shit.” Brad laughs and drinks the last of his whiskey, shaking his head at Nate’s offer of more. Nate shrugs and stares at the bottle for a moment before he looks back at Brad. “You’re one of the best men I’ve ever worked with, in any field. You’re sharp and you’re smart and you understand the company line even if half the time you’re toeing your way over it. The world won’t change without people effecting the change, Brad.”

“And there’s no such thing as a coincidence, sir.” He pauses, offering Nate a smile of his own. “You’re not trying to put me out of a job.”

“No,” Nate agrees. “I’m offering you one.”

Brad rubs his jaw and shakes his head. “I’m career military.”

“And you’ve served a career.”

“I don’t have my twenty.”

Nate sighs. “Two more years.”

Brad doesn’t say anything as a distant metallic voice calls a flight to McGuire Air Force Base. “That’s me. Fuel stop in the Azores and then New Jersey. Pick up my bike, and then I’m headed back to California.”

“For two more years.”

“Don’t worry, Nate. I’m pretty sure you won’t have solved the world’s problems by then, unless you _really_ put your mind to it.” He gets up and shoulders his bag. “So ask me then.”

“How will I know where to find you?”

“I trust you have your resources.” He sketches a quick salute and then nods before turning sharply, the familiar flash of blood red and Navy blue in his own mind and likely in Nate’s. “I’ll see you in two years.”

“Will you say yes?”

Brad looks back, smiling, then turns around and heads for his plane.  



End file.
